


The Night Loves Us

by athousandvictories



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Bickering, Biting, Canon Compliant, Drunk Geralt of Rivia, Drunk Jaskier | Dandelion, Drunk Sex, First Kiss, Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandvictories/pseuds/athousandvictories
Summary: "Gwent.""No.""Strip Gwent.""Absolutely not." Geralt's tone is menacing, but his lips twitch upward ever so slightly. Someone uneducated in the ways of witchers would not consider this change in expression consequential, perhaps would not even notice it. Jaskier is highly educated in both the usual sense and in Geralt's peculiarities, and is satisfied.Geralt and Jaskier shelter from a storm in an empty inn.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 54
Kudos: 532





	The Night Loves Us

**Author's Note:**

> There is minimal substance here, folks.

"Gwent."

"No."

"Strip Gwent."

"Absolutely not." Geralt's tone is menacing, but his lips twitch upward ever so slightly. Someone uneducated in the ways of witchers would not consider this change in expression consequential, perhaps would not even notice it. Jaskier is highly educated in both the usual sense and in Geralt's peculiarities, and is satisfied. 

He does regret that it's not a complete enough smile to expose Geralt's canines. He finds the sight of them agreeable, which is hardly odd--he's a viscount, if he wasn't fascinated by sharp-toothed things, he wouldn't travel to such dangerous and uncomfortable places.

Currently, the place is neither, though it would probably be eerily bare without them in it. It's an empty inn surrounded by an empty town--the citizens left weeks, maybe months ago, or were killed by the rotfiends Geralt put down half a week ago. They are conspicuously alone in the wide common room, sprawled irreverently on an old fur Jaskier pilfered from upstairs, close enough to the fire that the smell of smoke overpowers the smell of wet man (and wet witcher). There's no one to care that they've tracked mud on the floor and burned two nights worth of the best firewood at once, or that Roach is inside too, dozing some distance away with her rope halter tied to a vertical beam.

Geralt is gazing up at the cedar ceiling intently (the rain and hail are making alarming sounds on the roof). Jaskier is gazing at Geralt. 

"It's just regular Gwent if you don't lose," he says, winking. Then, "Am I even peripherally visible to you?"

"No."

"Fine." He pics up the empty wine bottle on the rug between them, turns it over absently in his hands, rings clinking on the glass. "Even if you lost. It would hardly be a crushing defeat. You're far more rained-on than I am." 

Geralt _is_. He'd given Jaskier his cloak and taken Jaskier's shitty one (grumbling and cursing as he did it, so Jaskier wouldn't think he was being doted on, and gloat). His disassembled armor is drying out on a table and several chairs, and his damp shirt is drying on his skin. Jaskier valiantly does not allow the latter to distract him.

"Geralt. What will keep me from perishing of boredom?" 

"Mm," Geralt says, still faintly smiling. 

"Strangely immune to being annoyed today, aren't you?" Jaskier murmurs, half to himself, brows knitted. He sets the wine bottle down on its side and it rolls lazily across the floorboards. Then, "You're actually drunk!"

"So are you," comes Geralt's dry rumble. 

"No, that is _brilliant_. I wasn't sure if you even could, and I'd hate to be drunk alone with someone so... stoic. M'having one more." 

Jaskier attempts to sit up and finds it very unpleasant. "Ow. Never mind. Not worth it." He drapes his hand across his forehead like a swooning damsel. "Don't know where my cup went anyway," he mutters, frowning. It's upsetting to him to lose things when he hasn't even _walked_ anywhere.

A look of fond exasperation flickers briefly over Geralt's profile. He sits up easily and pours himself more vodka from a bottle well on its way to empty. He tips it into his mouth without the slightest wince (despite the fact that the distiller who supplies this is particular establishment could well be called ruthless, and several drinks ago, Jaskier had been concerned that he risked certain blindness).

" _Oh_ , good for you," Jaskier says, to resist being mesmerized by the motion of Geralt's throat as he swallows. Geralt catches him staring anyway. Jaskier rationalizes that since he's clearly drunk, his gawking could well be meaningless, and carries on brazenly.

Geralt only raises his eyebrows and pointedly fills Jaskier's cup. He sets it down on the rug beside Jaskier's head.

"Where th'fuck did you find that. Fucking thing." Jaskier slides his eyes sideways to evaluate the offending cup. It's too full, the clear liquid hardly a thumbnail from the top, threatening to slosh over the rim. Geralt being drunk enough to overpour is an intriguing concept that he ponders at length until he notices amber tomcat eyes boring into him expectantly. 

"I can't get up. Won't, I mean. Too--" he moves a little to test the operability of his spine, "too comfortable."

Geralt offers him a hand, which is mostly unhelpful since he's sitting, but he manages to wrench himself upright with a bit of consistent effort.

"Urgh." Jaskier decides that his current estimate of halfway drunk was perhaps incorrect, since the room is spinning. Geralt withdraws his hand and Jaskier replaces it with the cup, which he gulps in a single shot, gasping in the wake of what was certainly more than a mouthful of alcohol. Some of it runs down over his hand, and he licks it shamelessly off his wrist and palm.

Geralt grins just enough to show a flash of teeth. 

Jaskier briefly ponders the prospect of those teeth in his jugular, and then thinks better of the fantasy, since he's fantastically drunk and liable to blurt something that will get him cuffed upside the head.

He flops back down. The spinning ends, and everything becomes pleasantly blurred.

"How about now. Strip. Gwent"

"Still too sober."

Jaskier takes a moment to think. The epiphany when it hits him is glorious. "Implying there's a point", he lifts his left hand enough to hover it over his chest, gestures enthusiastically in a nameless shape, "at which you'd play strip Gwent."

Geralt looks into his empty cup like it holds all secrets of history and time. "Suppose it does." A tiny frown forms on his brow. "Hmm."

"I'm personally fond enough of indecency that I don't even have to be drunk."

"I know."

"What's the most indecent thing you've ever done?" 

"I don't do anything indecent."

"That's just a lie." Jaskier lifts his index finger, "I know for a fact Yennefer would have sex in the middle of a town square just to liven up a dull afternoon. She is _exactly_ the type."

"I wouldn't."

"Even in your wild youth?"

Geralt hums introspectively. Jaskier does not miss the minute lift in the corner of his mouth. 

"Ha. I knew you had. Tell, and I'll tell you mine afterwards. I'll even--" Jaskier places his hand sincerely over his heart, " I'll even bet you a drink it's worse. Or better. Filthier, anyway."

"The daughter of the horse breeder who sold me Roach--Roach's predecessor. In a stable."

"That is, in fact, disappointingly decent. Who hasn't been caught in the straw by a groom or," he gestures wildly, "two?"

"In the aisle."

"Ah, that's a little better. Not better than jerking off a lord's son in a hallway at his own sister's wedding banquet, though."

"Lucky for you, since any more of this will kill you."

Jaskier makes a disobedient grab for the bottle but it's further than it looks, and he gets a handful of empty air. 

Geralt laughs, drinks on his defeat (twice) and collapses back down onto the rug beside Jaskier, his spine making a spectacular series of clicks. 

"That was deafening, Witcher." 

"You're _drunk_."

"Because I think your verte--your, your back, is profoundly ruined?"

"Because you're slurring," Geralt's voice is an unusually deep rumble. Jaskier is convinced it is because the gods are fond of fucking with his sanity. "And your heartbeat is faster."

"Your fault for pouring. Shit job, that."

"You were meant to sip it."

"Please. Nobody--nobody _sips_ vodka. _You're_ drunk."

"Mm." Geralt does something that makes his neck crack like someone's snapped a bundle of twigs.

"Ow." Jaskier says, cringing.

Geralt snorts. "You're pathetic."

Jaskier rolls onto his side and casts about for someone who will take his side, but the entire inn is empty except for Roach, and it only takes him a glance in her direction to decide she'll be no help. 

"Useless."

"What?"

"Roach won't-- _Gods_." Jaskier absorbs the absurdity of a horse standing beside the bar-counter like she's waiting for an ale all at once, starts to shake with silent laughter. "Roach won't defend me from your mockery." 

"Fuck," says Geralt in a strained voice, "you're--" He pinches the bridge of his nose as if it'll stop him from laughing (it doesn't). "You're in your cups, bard."

"Yes," Jaskier gasps, when he can speak again. "Mm. Gods bless vodka." He reaches toward it, and Geralt rolls over and captures his wrist before he can take it. 

"No," he says, moving the vodka out of reach of Jaskier's hand and knocking it over in the process.

"Noooo," Jaskier sighs at the growing puddle, and then starts laughing again. "Sorry. Sorry." He pauses to catch his breath and fails miserably. "It's actually not funny. The storm of the century is raging outside, and I'm--Gods. I'm trapped in here with no more vodka, a drunk witcher and a _horse_."

Geralt scrubs at his face wearily. His lips are twitching. 

"So. Strip Gwent," Jaskier says.

"Go to sleep."

+++

When Geralt wakes up (he thinks it must be twenty minutes later, since the fire has not burned down) Jaskier is standing on a table with a bottle in his left hand.

"The fuck," he says, "are you doing?" 

"Trying t'see out the window properly."

Jaskier's eye line is, in fact, several feet above the window. Also, since the storm is still drumming violently on the roof, Geralt's guess is that the windows are still dark.

"Do you think the moon is really a woman? In all the myths--" Jaskier jumps down from the table to the floor, and mysteriously survives it. Just watching him land gives Geralt a splitting headache.

"In all the myths, the moon is a woman, which is probably because of their," he makes a vague circular gesture with the bottle hand, and a splash of crimson lands at his feet, "you know. Cycles. But I rather think women are more like the sun. Most of the women I have known are actually very warm, and I very much like to be naked around them. While typically the men," and he points at Geralt, "are cold, and remote."

"Why are you _drinking_?"

"Going to feel like shit in the morning either way, and the vodka was wearing off." Going by the clarity (or rather, lack of) of his own vision, Geralt guesses that it is too soon for the vodka to even slightly be wearing off.

"Did you know that modern astronomers theorize that we only see one side of the moon? I learned plenty of uninteresting things at Oxenfurt, but that was not one of them. Would you like some of this?" Jaskier is already pushing a full cup into Geralt's hand.

Geralt drinks it, because of the headache, and lies down on his side to study the fire, head propped up on his arm. Jaskier continues to pace about (loudly) for several minutes before returning to the hearth.

"Okay," Jaskier says, and folds back down onto the fur facing Geralt. "My second wind is... oof. Done."

"Good." 

"Don't be rude." 

There's a silence. Jaskier watches Geralt, and Geralt watches the fire.

"I think the moon is cast as a woman because men wrote the myths. The moon embodies the mysterious, the frustrating, so it makes a better... a better..."

Geralt raises his eyebrows.

"Shit. S'coming to me. Metaphor! For a lover."

"The moon--is frustrating?"

"Love. It serves no purpose, except to light the dark. It's... incomprehensible. So it confounds us--frustrates us."

"Frustrates _you_."

"Wait, don't tell me, love doesn't frustrate _witchers_ because they don't _feel._ "

"It's--different." 

"Bullshit." 

The space between them is quite small, and it's at this moment that they both become aware of it. There's a silence. Geralt watches the fire, and Jaskier watches the reflected flames in his eyes.

"I'm not afraid of your teeth, White Wolf." 

"You should be."

"Well, too late."

"Hm." Geralt says, and shifts closer. They are near enough to feel each others' breath. The firelight glows red and gold on Geralt's face, around the edges of Jaskier's hair.

"Fuck," Jaskier whispers.

Geralt grips his chin gently and bites down softly on his lower lip. They taste each other lazily for a moment, tongues and lips sour with wine and sharp with vodka. Then Jaskier knots his hands in Geralt's hair and the kiss becomes heavy with drunken lust, a mess of tangled limbs and desperate hands. 

Jaskier tugs on Geralt's hair gently, tilts his head back. "I need you to bite me." 

"Fuck," Geralt growls, and rolls Jaskier underneath him, nips teasingly at his jaw before sinking his teeth into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Jaskier hisses, spine arching.

"I swear to the Gods I have wanted this since _Posada_." 

Geralt hums into his neck, pondering. Then he roughly hikes Jaskier's shirt up to his collarbone and mouths his way down the side of his torso, hands fumbling on the buttons of his shot-silk breeches. Jaskier groans as he peels fabric aside and presses a kiss just inside the jut of his hipbone. 

Geralt grins up at him, forearms braced on Jaskier's thighs. "Do you still want teeth?"

"Fuck. Off."

+++

"I've an important question," Jaskier says later, running his fingers tenderly through pale hair.

"What?" Geralt asks, lips brushing his ribcage.

"Now that we're lovers--am I more like the sun, or the moon?"

**Author's Note:**

> See? It really was devoid of substance. Hope you enjoyed it anyway, thanks for reading & know that if you leave a comment I feel an oddly personal affection for you. (Did I pull off omniscient POV? Should I never do it again? Only you can tell me, because I have no beta!)
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://athousandvictories.tumblr.com) if you like reading sappy poetry excerpts


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